


Gestalt

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Character(s), Alien Culture, Alien Mythology/Religion, Angst, F/M, Loneliness, M/M, Psychic Bond, Regret, Sensuality, Zhian'tara, fun with pronouns and POV, stylistic choice rather than bad writing I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 04:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8651056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: Curzon on being Odo and Odo on being Curzon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the ds9reversebang 2016. My fic was based on [this fanart by artanisnerwen.](http://artanisnerwen.tumblr.com/post/151411583385/ds9reversebang-curzon-odo-though-i-think-he)

In the words of Benjamin Sisko, Curzon had always spoken warmly about his zhian’tara. 

Curzon was nothing if he was not a skilled and habitual liar.

He had actually found the idea of the zhian’tara ceremony unsettling. His own had been fascinating, insightful, wonderful, and certainly it had been no lie when he said that it was one of the most powerful experiences of his life, but still… there was something profoundly discomfiting about it. 

Perhaps it was the subtle artificiality of it. He couldn’t help but think that he was talking to a version of his past hosts who had never existed. Although the point of the ceremony was to emphasise the bond between a current host of a symbiont and all those who had come before them, it almost seemed, to Curzon, to disrespect the bond between the past hosts and the Dax symbiont to achieve this. 

It wasn’t that his past hosts couldn’t remember being joined or what being Dax meant for them, exactly—many had spoken about how they’d changed after joining. But when pressed they couldn’t identify any specifics about their past lives. For instance, Torias had married after he had been joined, yet when he spoke to Curzon about the fights he’d had with Nilani over his career and the making up they’d do afterwards, he spoke as though he had experienced it as a single entity, as though he had no insight from Dax’s long life and many marriages. 

For years afterwards, he thought about appearing to the Dax hosts after him during their zhian’tara ceremonies, talking to them as though he had never needed Lela’s memories to help him when he was an ambassador, never thought of Audrid or Tobin when he had needed to be kind and quiet, never taken notes from Emony when he was trying something particularly athletic out in the bedroom. He didn’t know how any retelling of his life could be truthful if he was trying to do so as someone completely discrete and cut off from his past hosts. 

It was odd then, as he lay dying on an operating table, side by side with Jadzia Idaris, who looked even more beautiful to him now that she was moments from becoming Jadzia Dax, to think that the next time he was aware of himself as an individual he would be truly alone for the first time in decades… and he’d be facing the woman who he had nearly robbed of her chance to experience what he was so reluctant to give up. 

It had been easier to cut her loose and abdicate the responsibility to maintain a professional relationship than it had been to just live with his feelings of discomfort. If she hadn’t reapplied then his weakness would have cost her what she’d wanted her whole life. In light of all that, giving her the Dax symbiont was the least he could do.

“Curzon,” she said, smiling at him so kindly and serenely and he smiled back at her. 

And then there was nothing.

And then… there was everything.

He felt the absence of the symbiont keenly, but that he had expected. He hadn’t expected Odo. 

How could he have? But suddenly, he was a gestalt being again. Not whole, not really, but so much closer to whole than he had expected. Odo, too, was meant to be more than a single entity, and Curzon gave him something closer to a natural existence even if he couldn’t be a true replacement for his people.

If he felt conflicted about his decision to stay separate from Jadzia and leave both himself and Dax incomplete forever, then that was almost more comforting than certainty could have been—nothing was more natural to a joined Trill than ambivalence. He’d have washed someone out of the initiate programme in an instant if they couldn’t handle a little heart stopping, stomach churning uncertainty. Metaphorically speaking, that was, as his (their—his and Odo’s both now) body had neither a heart nor a stomach.

And what a body it was! Odo couldn’t help but feel joyful as he felt Curzon’s amazement in their body. Even just sharing his existence after so long alone was a balm, but being linked with a non-Changeling who felt such a sense of awe and delight in their shared form added an unexpected depth to the experience. It couldn’t be the same as being part of the Great Link, but it was a beautiful experience all of its own.

He felt more confident than ever before, more comfortable in himself, more _sexy_ than he’d have thought was possible for a creature like him. 

People had, of course, made crude comments to Odo over the years about the possible applications of his shapeshifting, but it had always seemed to be a way to make him less of a person and more of an object of curiosity. Now, he felt alive to possibility.

Instead of being repulsed by the idea, which he had always thought would make him feel like little better than a talking marital aid, he all but fizzed with the quiet knowledge that he could very possibly be a better lover than anyone else in the quadrant. 

Knowing that he could feel so much pleasure at even the thought of sex was a revelation. What it must be like to actually _have_ a lover gasp and shudder at his touch! 

The awe he felt was, itself, a delight to Curzon in the way Curzon’s had been to him.

He also had a clarity with Curzon that he’d lacked as himself. As he went to give Quark the ‘scare of his life’ he’d realised, suddenly and delightedly, that he was _attracted_ to that awful man, and had kissed him soundly on the forehead, hands clasped around his ears. 

Quark’s stumbling little walk towards the back room of the bar afterwards was more satisfying than a month on Risa or a seized shipment of contraband put together.

He stumbled, himself, for a second emotionally just after as Curzon searched for a comparison to something from one of his past lives and found that empty space in himself. They shrugged it off as quickly as possible and went back to talking to Benjamin, just as Jadzia came into the bar and they found themselves thrown again by the reminder of what they were avoiding. 

Shrugging off her questions and attempts to get Curzon back on-task with his traditional role was a little harder, but by no means impossible. Curzon notoriously never did things in an orthodox way and she was still upset by her experience with Joran—who, speaking of, Curzon was more than a little thrown by himself. He hadn’t expected to learn something like this about himself after he had _died_ —so it was not overly difficult to manoeuvre her. 

They felt bad… but not bad enough that it over writ how good it felt to be together or how much Curzon couldn’t face what he had done to Jadzia. 

So instead he hurt her more. He knew that he was being avoidant again. That he was doing the very same thing that he had done when he had spuriously washed her out of the initiate programme. Making Jadzia pay, and pay dearly, for his weakness was a habit that he couldn’t even shake posthumously. 

But at least now she had Dax—she had her dream and he had the next best thing. It could even be argued that he’d given her the better end of the bargain. And, besides that, it had to be considered that Odo was able to be less alone with him. As much as telling Jadzia that this was the best for everyone had been nine parts manipulation, it was still at least felt one part true. The best lies always were.

For hours after he’d knowingly and wilfully broken Jadzia Dax’s heart, they retreated back to the sheer hedonistic sensory bliss of their new existence, assuming different forms in Odo’s quarters and then just experiencing his natural state.

It couldn’t last. Of course it couldn’t. 

Jadzia had been vulnerable and insecure enough and Curzon had known her well enough that they had almost thought it could work, but as much as he had been able to identify all the right buttons to press, she was still the person who had reapplied to the Symbiosis Commission for a place on the initiate programme when no one else in Trill’s history had. And, besides that, she had Benjamin on her side, who knew better than anyone how to stand up to Curzon, and who was there to give her the right push at the right time.

Curzon was able to return to Jadzia without shame and she had accepted him back as kindly and serenely as the first time. 

Odo was bereft. And, unlike Curzon, he had no respite from his shame. 

That he could have been so selfish and so swayed by the sensual, tactile pleasures Curzon had given him told him things about himself that he had never wanted to know. And maybe it hadn’t even just been that—so much of it had been a desire not to be alone again. He had been able to give up staying with his people, but maybe if the stakes had been even a little less he wouldn’t have. And, regardless, how much pride could he take in his decision not to rejoin his people, when he had been so ready to hurt Jadzia and to make her incomplete, just so that he would be less incomplete?

All he could do now was apologise to her. 

She forgave him, just as she had forgiven Curzon, although with far less reason to as far as Odo could tell—he was not a part of her like Curzon was—and she told him that he had given her a gift. She lit up when she talked about Curzon’s experiences of shapeshifting and he saw the ghost of what he had lost flickering in her eyes.

He supposed, all things considered, it really was the least that he could do for her.

Later in the evening, when they had finished talking and Jadzia was talking to Kira and Sisko, Odo made towards the door quietly.

“What, not even a goodnight kiss for your favourite scoundrel?” Quark called towards him from behind the bar. 

He seemed to have recovered from the shock of having served Curzon and Odo earlier that day. 

“Or is Curzon your favourite scoundrel?” Quark asked. “I’d like to hope that I at least make the top three.”

“What do you want, Quark?” Odo grumbled. 

He wondered if he should apologise to Quark too. He could hardly condemn him the Ferengi for his wandering hands anymore when he had grabbed him by the lobes.

“Off the top of my head?” Quark said. “Nog to come to his senses and take on his apprenticeship in the bar like I planned since he was an infant, Rom to give up on this ‘growing a spine’ nonsense, a universe without war, and maybe a small moon.”

“Is there anything you want, _from me_?” Odo asked with a ghost of a growl and Quark went a peculiar colour as he blushed. Oh. 

“Oh nothing special,” Quark said, stammering a little. Odo stood there waiting for him to continue, but he didn’t.

“Quark,” Odo replied finally. “I’m sorry about earlier. My actions, I mean. I shouldn’t have… touched you in a manner considered sexual in your species.” 

“Well you could have bought me a drink first,” Quark said, with a half shrug. He was trying so hard to look nonchalant and failing so profoundly. “It’s not a big deal. I was just surprised by you being… not you. I’m not scarred by the experience or anything if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Well… good,” Odo said. After a pause he added, “But I’m not giving you a goodnight kiss.”

The thoughts he’d had earlier when Curzon’s influence had made him so aware of how it might be to have a lover and so aware of just what his persistent fascination with the small-time crook in front of him was rose in Odo’s mind.

Quark quirked an eye ridge at him.

“Your loss, I guess,” he said. 

Maybe there was more than one way to not be alone, a treacherous voice whispered to Odo inside him. He steeled his resolve against it.

“Goodnight, Quark,” he replied firmly and left the bar alone.


End file.
